How Could Experiential Learning Shape the Future of Leadership Development?

Here at RSVP Design, we're always keen to read and discuss any survey that comes from our colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). The latest focus of our attention is 'The Top 20 Leadership Challenges'  published in July 2024.

RSVP Design learning tools are designed to be versatile, and many of our customers worldwide regularly use them as practice fields in leadership development settings; so we're always interested in the latest research that tells us what challenges today's leaders are describing. The Survey makes interesting reading, especially as we're currently advising two major global companies on the adaptation of specific tools to meet their leadership development needs.

So, what does the survey tell us, and what conversations has it provoked among our design community?

CCL analysed data from 48,000 leaders, representing 7,000 organisations around the world, to determine the 5 critical challenges they face at different organisational levels.
Here's a summary of those results:

 Our reaction to this?

From the perspective of learning and development professionals who have daily contact with organisations in every sector and every part of the world, we're not surprised at these results. They accurately reflect what our customers are telling us, and closely correspond to their questions about what they can expect from our learning tools. Our customer conversations that start "I need an experiential tool that will address this challenge......" often revolve around challenges that appear in the table above.

The other perspective that we need to consider is that of learning designers - are our tools effective as practice fields through which these challenges can be addressed? This is a much bigger conversation and requires a closer reading of the survey results than my summary above can convey, but there's a key conclusion that we've been able to draw:

It's going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to deliver an effective and transferable learning and development response to these challenges without a substantial experiential element.

That's a strong statement, but one in which we have huge confidence.

The confidence comes from the fact that the vast majority of the 20 challenges require a significant degree of practical, behavioural skill development to configure an effective individual response. These are not purely cognitive learning needs - they are not about knowing something new; they are to a large extent affective learning needs that lean heavily on interpersonal skills and attitudes; and there's no more effective way of developing interpersonal skills and attitudes than through the practice field environments of experiential learning tools.

Put a different way, responding to the majority of these challenges is about changing what leaders do rather than increasing what they know.

Delivered well, an experiential learning session is, above all, a rehearsal space. It's a place where individuals and teams can practice doing things differently, doing things better, doing things that are significant in improving organisational performance. Importantly it's a space where mistakes (and there are always mistakes when people are learning to do new things) can be made without in any way exposing company or organisation.

Thanks to CCL for a powerful and timely new paper; it's made us think, it's provided us with plenty of conversation topics; most importantly it's given us confidence that we have the learning tools that provide a potent response to many of the challenges that contemporary leaders face.